Well, I finally found the source of a nasty oil leak, and fortunately it coincided with having to tension my timing belts that I did in May so it's worked out well. One small hitch I've run into though, the connector that attaches the plastic bit for the ignition coil does not seem to want to come out of the camshaft timing gear. I've already scuffed the metal trying to pull it out with pliers after applying a healthy dose of PB Blaster, which has me worried, and there's not a lot of room to even pull it straight out. I ran a blow torch over the gear to heat up the surrounding metal to loosen it up to no avail. I'm worried about trying to twist it to loosen it up given that it's attached to the camshaft and could potentially damage the valves if it slips and hits one of the pistons. Does anyone have any tips for pulling this stubborn bit of metal out? Any advice would be appreciated! For reference, here are pictures from the site's guide demonstrating the part and step in question.

If you have to, use vicegrips and twist/pull it out. You can still file it clean afterwards, as it doesn't have to be perfectly smooth as all you are doing is fitting the rotor onto it afterwards.

If you are worried about valves touching, turn the crankshaft back by 30-40 degrees to move the pistons down and away from the valves. When you want to line things up later, get the camshaft into TDC, and then rotate the crankshaft back up to TDC.